Verified videos of public executions in Gaza reveal internal power struggle between Hamas and rival factions

As Israel's war wages in the Gaza Strip, a recent public execution revealed the interior divisions between rival militants

Sarah Schmidt

Alice Palussiere

Max Gilbert

, and 3 others

Sep 26, 2025

Several videos of an alleged public execution in the streets of Gaza circulated on social media platforms X, Instagram and Telegram earlier this week. The oldest one was posted on Sunday, September 21. Members of Eurovision News Spotlight examined the videos and the claims surrounding them.

The videos are shot from different angles but they all show three blindfolded men kneeling on the street while being surrounded by four armed and masked individuals. All of them are shot dead at the scene. A large crowd of people can be seen observing the killings, filming them on their phones and cheering with the cries of “Allah Akbar”.

The execution takes place in front of severely damaged or completely destroyed buildings. The façade of one of them resembles the entrance of Gaza’s city Al-Shifa Hospital.

The execution can be located to a street corner southeast of the hospital. In one video of the execution, a petrol station can be seen, as well as various buildings with distinct features.

These can also be found on the satellite images used by Google Maps, that uses imagery from Airbus and Maxar in this area.

The arrangement of the identified buildings also matches the displayed location of the petrol station. The pile of rubble next to a small building, just next to the execution site, is also visible on the satellite imagery.

Through this analysis, we were able to confirm the approximate coordinates of the location where the video was filmed.

Militias and co-operation with ‘the occupation’

In the videos, Arabic shouting can be heard on the scene. One person can be heard shouting about the decision “to immediately execute the team” which he says “has joined hands with occupation”.

A Palestinian security official from the Hamas-run Gaza government told Reuters the executions were carried out on Sunday by the “Joint Operations Room of the Palestinian resistance” to send “a clear message and serve as a deterrent to anyone tempted to collaborate with the occupation”.

The Joint Operations Room of the Palestinian resistance consists of a dozen military wings affiliated with various Palestinian resistance factions, including Hamas. Comments made by the uploaders of the shared videos stated that Hamas was behind the executions, as the group seeks to crush rising challenges from small bands of armed Palestinians opposed to the group that have emerged in several parts of Gaza.

In June of this year, Hamas announced that they had established so-called ‘Deterrence’ forces to crack down on local gangs engaging in theft and trading in looted aid. Several Arabic-language accounts attribute the executions to the Deterrence forces.

One of the execution videos was filmed by journalist Hemam Al-Zeitounia, who works as a cameraman for Al Jazeera. Eurovision News Spotlight contacted him directly, and he gave some additional context about the killings.

“The three men who were executed had been arrested by the resistance movement about a week earlier,” he said, adding that they were interrogated about a series of allegations against them. These allegations included kidnapping civilians in central Gaza and handing them over to Israeli forces, looting and stealing from displaced people moving between Gaza City and the south, firing shots in markets to intimidate civilians, kidnapping and killing people returning to their homes, and passing on information about resistance members to the Israeli forces.

The reference to the shooters as being from the ‘resistance movement’ was not specified any further, but it likely refers to Hamas, whose official name is the ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’. The allegations against the publicly executed men could not be independently verified, but the account by an eyewitness journalist gives additional context about the type of activity that is being targeted by Hamas and aligned coalition groups in Gaza.

“The executions took place publicly in the center of Gaza City—as a deterrent to anyone who might consider collaborating,” Al-Zeitounia told Spotlight. Soon after the executions, Al-Zeitounia’s house was reportedly attacked by Israeli forces, prompting speculation online that it was retaliation for his publication of the video, but he denied this. “My house was attacked after I refused an Israeli officer’s threats to evacuate to the south. I work as a cameraman for Al Jazeera and continue my work to document what is happening. The attack on my house resulted in one death and 12 injuries, most of them women and children,” he said.

Rival leader Abu Shabab

The ‘Deterrence’ coalition has been on the warpath against a rival clan’s leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, since the summer. On July 6, it vowed to “show no mercy to any of them (...) and we will treat them as traitors and agents deserve to be treated”, as stated in one of their official channels.

Abu Shabab is the leader of the Popular Forces, an anti-Hamas militia that gained prominence this year after a series of aid looting incidents in the Rafah area of southern Gaza were linked to the group.

The group has been accused of co-operating with Israeli army. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in the summer to arming and supporting militias in Gaza, as part of an effort to fight Hamas influence in the enclave.

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Shabab describes himself on Facebook as defending “the dignity and freedom of the Palestinian people”, while his group claimed to “lift the injustice and terrorism practiced by terrorist movements, foremost among them the terrorist Hamas“ in a recent post published the day after the execution.

Last month, Abu Shabab posted a video featuring doctors and teachers in the reportedly “secure zone” of Rafah, thanking President Trump for his support.

On August 23, Yasser Abu Shabab announced recruitment for security personnel on its Facebook, calling for officers and soldiers to join the militia in eastern Rafah, promising monthly salaries from 3,000 to 5,000 shekels ($890 to $1,500).

A warning for other rivals

In one of the videos preceding the execution, an armed man can be heard warning that “Yasser Abu Shabab, along with Rami Helles and Ahmad Jundieh, would face the same fate“. With the names, the voices in the video also shout about ‘kafir’ — meaning ‘non-believer’ or ‘infidel’.

A few days before, the Hamas-affiliated news agency Shehab News published a list of Gaza inhabitants they allege collaborate with Israeli intelligence and recruit others to spy for Israel under the pretext of providing aid, including Helles and Jundieh.

Rami Helles has been presented as widely associated with Fatah and enjoying IDF protection in an Ynet article in July. he later denied this affiliation, according to Middle East Monitor.

The warnings shouted to so-called ‘infidels’ at the scene of this recent public execution give a new insight into the political machinations and internal divisions in the Gaza Strip, and the lengths Hamas and the Deterrence forces are willing to go to crack down on dissent.

Amid the internal disputes, the coalition of main militant groups in the Gaza Strip have long been struggling to hold off the professional, well-resourced Israeli army that is now recapturing the main population centres in the small territory — with devastating consequences for civilians living under their rule.

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